The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus and, more particularly, to a cut-paper printing type facsimile apparatus that can effectively produce a high-quality printed product on cut-paper (separate sheets of recording paper) by adopting a technique for effectively using recording paper and the apparatus for printing a received image on the cut-paper and delivering the printed product.
In conventional cut-paper printing type facsimile apparatuses, a page of a received image is printed on a sheet of recording paper or two sheets or more when a page of the received image is longer than that printable on a sheet at the receiving side. Such alternatives have been also known that a page of a received image is enlarged or contracted by various scaling methods to print on a formatted sheet at a receiving terminal or a plurality of pages of a received image is contracted to print on a sheet at the receiving terminal.
The conventional cut-paper printing type facsimile apparatuses uses a sheet of recording paper for printing a received image that is smaller than a printing area of the paper sheet or prints out a page of an image transmitted by a sender on a paper sheet irrespective of an amount of information contained therein. It means that a page transmitted by a sender, irrespective of its small content, is faithfully reflected on a sheet (i.e., as a page with a large used space) at a receiving terminal. This results in inefficient and uneconomical use of recording paper and the apparatus.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus that prints a received image on a separate sheet of recording paper (so called xe2x80x9ccut-paper sheetxe2x80x9d) according to a method for realizing the saving in consumption of recording paper and the reduction of a printing time with no need of using an additional image storage, which method, therefore, is easily applied to popular type facsimile apparatuses and increase the efficiency of using the apparatus and materials.
The saving in consumption of recording paper and the reduction of printing time in each facsimile apparatus can be realized by providing means for enabling a facsimile apparatus to print a plurality of received image pages on a single sheet of recording paper without using an image storage device.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus for printing a received image on a cut-paper sheet, which comprises printing means for printing on a cut-paper sheet a line image produced on the basis of a received facsimile signal, counting means for counting the number of lines of the line image printed or to be printed on a single sheet by the printing means, comparison means for comparing the printed line number counted by the counting means with the preset number of lines per sheet, wherein the printing means starts printing on a new page only upon receipt of a signal outputted by the comparison means when the number of lines printed on the current cut-paper sheet reached the preset value and a new cut-paper sheet is prevented from being fed until the number of lines printed on the current sheet reaches the preset value.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus wherein, when a page-end signal and/or a communication-end signal is inputted but the comparison means is outputting a comparison signal of showing the printed lines being less than the preset value, the printing means continues printing on a current cut-paper sheet a line image of a next received page and/or a new line image to be received through a next communication.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus wherein, in the case of printing on a current cut-paper sheet a line image of the next received page and/or the next communication, the printing means prints a specified image indicating the end of a page and/or the end of communication (e.g., a partition-line image) after the end of the received current page image and before starting printing of the next received page and/or the next received transmission so that the user may clearly recognize a boundary between two pages or two communications on the sheet by the dividing line image printed there between.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus that is further provided with instruction means for giving an instruction signal for instructing the printing means to execute the delivery of the printed cut-paper sheet prior to the above-described operation procedure on completion of receipt of information so that printed cut-paper sheet is delivered out of the apparatus to clearly indicate the end of the current communication.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus that is further provided with instruction means for give an instruction signal for instructing the printing means not to execute the delivery of the printed cut-paper sheet prior to the above-described procedure on completion of receipt of information so that printed cut-sheet may be held in the apparatus to reserve the adaptability to user""s request for changing working conditions.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus that is further provided with a comparison means for comparing the number of printed lines counted by the counting means with the specified number of printed lines, which is preset as a reference value at which the delivery of printed cut-paper sheet is started, and an instruction means is provided to give an instruction signal for instructing the printing means not to execute the delivery of the printed cut-paper sheet on completion of the receipt of data if a comparison signal outputted from the comparison means shows the number of printed lines being smaller than the preset reference value. The above-described logic used for functioning of the facsimile apparatus of the present invention is applied to a time point of the end of the current facsimile communication, thereby saving in the consumption of a cut-paper sheet of recording paper for recording thereon two facsimile communications.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus that is further provided with a timer for generating a signal to start the delivery of a remaining cut-paper sheet with an elapse of a specified time duration after giving an instruction prohibiting the delivery of the cut-sheet, thus realizing the delivery of the printed-and-held cut-paper sheet from the apparatus when a specified time elapsed after the completion of receipt of information.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus that is further provided with an input means for inputting a command for delivering a printed cut-sheet, which forces the printing means to deliver the printed-and-held cut-paper sheet from the apparatus. This enables a user to operate the apparatus to deliver the remaining cut-paper sheet therefrom as necessary.